Read Online Demon Night by Meljean Brook - Free Book Online

the vampire answered. “Ah, Colin, you gorgeous freak. You aren’t in your daysleep.”
    “Not today, my dear Agent Milton, but I’ve little doubt I’ll soon wish I was. What do you want?”
    “Your house in Seattle.”
    “Dare I ask why?”
    “Drifter needs it.”
    Ethan stepped nearer the desk, uncertain how well the speaker would pick up his voice. “I’m going in after Legion.”
    “McCabe,” Colin said. “Lilith told you about Milliken?”
    “Yes. How is the doctor?”
    “Once she’s stable, I’ll find her a position at Ramsdell. Savi thinks she’ll recuperate faster if she’s busy.” Colin paused. “Don’t bring me any more turned against their will. Savi’s not resting easy.”
    No, Ethan imagined she wasn’t. Seeing a man cut down might have given anyone nightmares, and he supposed that was one of the benefits of not having to sleep. “I don’t aim to.”
    There was a long sigh, and a sound that Ethan thought might have been a swipe of fingers through hair. “Very well, McCabe. But I’ll not be pleased if you bring in a bloody herd of cows and let them chew on the furnishings.”
    Lilith raised her gaze to Ethan’s. “Come now, Colin,” she murmured. “Drifter’s taste in women isn’t that bad.”
    “I daresay his taste is nonexistent. Don’t use your Gift, McCabe. I’m sending the access codes to Lilith. Savi prepared a few surprises for unauthorized entrants, and the system looks for discrepancies.”
    “He warned you, so he must like you,” Lilith mused a moment after the vampire had disconnected. “Did you call him beautiful?”
    A wry smile pulled at Ethan’s mouth. “I believe I said something of that nature when I met him.” Encountering the vampire for the first time had been a bit like being Enthralled; struck by the impossible perfection of Colin’s features, Ethan hadn’t managed his tongue well.
    The effect had eventually faded, and it was easy to find it amusing now—at the time, his involuntary response had infuriated him.
    “That’s nothing.” Jake stood up, retrieved his CD from the player. “I tried to kiss him.”
    Lilith pursed her lips, her eyes alight with interest. “I don’t suppose you’d reenact it with Drifter?”
    They left her office on her sigh of disappointment, but Ethan’s good humor fled when he felt the hesitation in Jake’s psychic scent, then the younger Guardian’s quick blocks.
    Ethan stopped in the middle of the hallway, turned. “Spit it out.”
    Jake’s jaw clenched briefly and regret darkened his face. “I found the data you requested.”
    Ethan’s gaze fell to the paper that appeared in his hand. He swallowed past the sudden chokehold on his throat and read the header as he unfolded it. “Arizona State Library?”
    “In their microfiche. There wasn’t much. Just this short mention, from a Wilmont newsletter dated August 1886.”
    The month after he and Caleb had ridden into Eden. Ethan frowned, shook his head. “Wilmont? That’s east of Tucson. I told him to head west.”
    “That’s why it took me so long to find it. I was looking in the wrong direction.”
    Jake was correct; there wasn’t much. Just a single line: Caleb McCabe, murder and thievery. Hanged.
    Ethan vanished the paper before it crumpled in his fist. The goddamned fool. He should have gone west.

CHAPTER 4
    “So, you remind me about lunch, but it’s you who forgets—Jesus, Charlie!” Jane abandoned her superior tone when she finally opened the door wide enough to see her. “Get in here. Did you put ice on it down at the gym? Did you forget to duck or forget to weave?”
    “Neither.” Charlie self-consciously lifted her hand to her face. A dark bruise flared from cheekbone to jaw. “I ran into a wall.”
    Jane rolled her eyes, grabbed Charlie’s hand, and pulled her down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlie dragged her feet on the hardwood floors, smiling for the first time since she’d woken—late—and found the feather gone. She’d